Motor City Marathoner

Brian Sell's blue-collar ethic has brought him to the lead pack of U.S. marathoning

The first months in the high-mileage Hansons program weren’t exactly auspicious for Sell. “We’d go to cross country meets and I was getting beat by college redshirt guys who were partying and not even training,” he says. “I think by December Kevin and Keith were probably ready to get rid of me.” Finally, Sell’s body began to adapt to the higher workload and the team’s competitive focus switched to the roads in the spring. The first breakthrough came in New York at the U.S. 8K championship in Central Park, where he finished ninth in 23:04. “I think that was the first time I ever won any money for running,” he says. “That kind of remotivated me, but the big thing was being up with the leaders, rubbing elbows with guys I’d only read about.”

That euphoria only lasted so long, and by the summer of 2003 Sell was thinking it was time to hang up the racing flats and start dental school, maybe settle down and get married to his college sweetheart Sarah. The U.S. 20K championships in New Haven on Labor Day put those plans on hold once again. Sell finished second in a PR 59:18, just 21 seconds behind Meb Keflezighi’s American record run, and was selected to run the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Portugal, where he was the first American in 25th.

Sell’s mindset going into New Haven wasn’t unusual, according to Clint Verran, a Hansons charter member who’s run with Sell longer than anyone. “He puts pressure on himself like it’s his last race, that if he doesn’t run well he’s going to quit,” says Verran. “I think a lot of it’s internal motivation, but that all-or-nothing approach is just what works best for him.”

Given Sell’s admitted lack of innate speed, the Hansons knew the logical best event for him would be the marathon, and he made his debut over the 26.2-mile distance at Chicago in 2003. “We ran as a group through 18 miles at 2:22 pace, then we were allowed to run as we wanted,” says Sell, who wound up running 2:19:57 and feeling “really good.”

The relative ease of that first marathon might have been a factor in what happened in his next one, the 2004 Olympic Trials in Birmingham, AL. “The plan was to run 5:02-5:05 pace, but when the race started no one wanted to do it,” he recalls. “We went out in 5:23, 5:26 and I thought ‘There’s no way I’m going to outkick guys like Meb and Culpepper if I let this race become a half marathon.’” So Sell set off on his own into a near-freezing wind, while everyone else ran in a well-protected pack behind him.

“I was keeping it nice and even, running low fives,” he continues. “When we got into town the crowds got me all fired up and I hit a couple of 4:50s and that kind of put the last nails in the coffin.” The chasers caught him just around the 20-mile point and quickly left him in their wake. “When those guys started filing by me I couldn’t even see, I was just stumbling along,” he says. He finished in a painful 2:17:20, good for 13th place, while teammates Trent Briney and Verran finished fourth and fifth. “I’d been running workouts way better than them,” says Sell. “I don’t know if I would have beaten them, but I would have been right around them if I hadn’t run stupid.”

That disappointment was almost enough to send Sell packing for dental school once more. “I was ready to give it up then,” he says. “I figured I wasn’t waiting around for another four years.”